The prevalent hair styling methods today are blow drying and hot curling. It is well known that heat applied to either wet or dry hair causes the hair to maintain the shape that it had during the time it was being heated. For this reason, various devices and methods have been available for shaping hair sections while either blow drying the section or hot curling or straightening the section.
To create lift or body in a hair style, it is important to dry the hair adjacent the scalp first while it is held away from the scalp. Good lift or body can be achieved if about a one inch length of hair out from the scalp is heated and/or dried first, while the hair is held in position extending out from the scalp. To accomplish this task, however, requires keeping the hair in that position while directing the heat and drying effect primarily to that portion of hair only. The higher the heat, the more effective it is to set the hair so that it maintains its position away from the scalp. However, a high heat directed toward the scalp creates discomfort. It would therefore be desirable to be able to hold the hair in position while directing the hot air either away from the scalp or across the scalp, rather than directly toward the scalp. Although this might be accomplished by holding the hair in position with the fingers of one hand while directing a blow dryer tangentially to the scalp, this requires the use of both hands for styling. In addition, the fact that hot air is then directed at the fingers holding the hair can make the fingers uncomfortably hot.
Numerous blow dryer attachments have been marketed as aiding in providing lift to hair styles. U.S. Pat. No. 4,955,145 to Scivolletti attempts to address the problem by providing a hair dryer nozzle attachment with a rectangular outlet opening with one long side wall forming an air deflector which has at its end a comb with each comb tooth having an attached short pick or prong extending into the deflected air stream. The air deflector is designed to concentrate the air stream and direct it perpendicularly toward the picks. However, as can be appreciated, the result is that the air is not held in position by the picks but instead is blown off of the picks by the concentrated air stream. Other hair dryer attachments which include teeth extending parallel to the air stream suffer from the same problem. If the air stream is aimed tangentially to the scalp, then the air blows the hair out of position before it can be dried by the air stream. If the air stream is directed toward the scalp, then the air blows the hair against the scalp creating a flattened rather than lifted hair style and further causing scalp discomfort if a relatively hot stream is used.
The present invention addresses both the hot scalp and lifting position problems by providing a device that both holds the hair in the necessary position away from the scalp and directs the hot air stream directly toward the portion of hair adjacent the scalp rather than toward the scalp itself.